


all, most, some, none

by Tangerina



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Bisexual Richie Tozier, Canon - Book & Movie Combination, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, M/M, Not A Fix-It, but not as sad as it could be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 09:47:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20928206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tangerina/pseuds/Tangerina
Summary: Eddie never thought he could be loved like that. He never thought he could love like that. Without having to smile in return. Without being forced to. Without feeling love like an endless cycle of worries and fears.Eddie smiles back to Richie, just because he wants to.





	all, most, some, none

**Author's Note:**

> this was really sad so i asked for validation to make a cheesy ending. thank you @DuendeJunior for the validation.
> 
> there’s some [marvin gaye’s voice]… sexual………… healing………… but not too much because i’m shy. 
> 
> also this fucking the night we met song won’t leave my head so. that’s it.
> 
> and also thanks to @sugimotos for beta-reading and you guys reading this should also read “we were together (I forgot the rest)” by them because… man. the feelings.

_ (i had all,) _

When Eddie wakes up, he’s in Richie’s arms. 

There’s something so touching about the way Richie holds him when he’s sleeping that Eddie can feel his throat itching, holding back the desire to cry. He doesn’t want Richie waking up to the sound of him crying, even if are tears of joy. Richie’s breath is on his neck and Eddie thinks that this is the cleanest feeling of the world. There is no one that being so close to Richie can be seen as dirty or ugly or wrong. _ I’m not sick_, he thinks to himself. _ I’m just in love_. 

Eddie puts his hand over Richie’s. It’s a touch that is almost not there, light as a feather. Eddie feels like he’s the only person awake in the world. Everyone else is sleeping, and his eyes are the only open ones. He wants to turn around, to look at Richie’s face, but he doesn’t need to do that. Richie’s face is memorized like a tattoo burning on Eddie’s brain. His big blue eyes, changing color as the light catches on them. Black hair, now full of curls because Richie is letting it grow wild. Eddie loves his hair like that. His pale face, purple circles under his eyes. Richie hates to sleep, he says he’ll sleep when he’s dead. Hence Eddie trying his best to not move. It’s so rare for Richie to sleep peacefully. Eddie wants to be in this moment forever. 

He remembers himself on his knees inside the church, fearing he would burn from the inside. Fearing he would go to hell. Fearing the thing he knew to grow inside him, an unnamed sickness. Fearing his mother knowing he had it inside him. How wrong he was. About himself, about everything. He was not the only one who felt like this, who felt different. He was not alone. He was not sick. If anything, he felt clearer and clearer when he was with Richie. It was not bad, not bad at all. 

When they kissed for the first time, Eddie heard his mother’s voice in his head, screaming everything she could about the sin of sodomy, about AIDS, about Eddie being too young and too weak to understand why some things are inherently wrong. It had been an awful kiss, because it was so good that Eddie could only think about it as a prohibited thing. 

But Richie tried again, and again, and again, and each kiss was felt by Eddie like a promise that he would never give up on him. Richie even said that he would be okay if he only could hold Eddie’s hand. That was the first time that Eddie kissed him and not the other way round. 

Now, they even had sex. Imagine that. 

Eddie suffocates a laugh. It’s always like this when he thinks about Richie: tears and laughter, all the happiness that he thought he was forbidden to feel bubbling inside his heart. 

When he’s with Richie, he feels that he can be happy for the rest of his life. 

It’s a thought so absurd. Of course he knows that they won’t always be happy. Of course he knows that the world is bigger than Richie’s room, where they can be together and not worry about anything. But the world is also bigger than Derry, bigger than his mother’s domains. When the anxiety comes to feed in Eddie’s chest and head, whispering that he will never be clean, that he will never be free, that he and Richie will fall apart and that he will have to choose his mother, always his mother, he remembers Richie promising him that they would leave Derry behind. Together. Leave with me, Richie whispered against his ears, a pleading that they both knew Eddie couldn’t fulfil. But Richie asked nonetheless. 

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t like to imagine how would be that life together. Eddie always admired Richie, so it’s obvious that in his mind, Richie excels at everything he tries to do. Acting, doing stand-ups, doing radio programs. He remembers Richie looking at him, an infinite supply of tenderness in his eyes, and saying _ you were the first person that made me feel seen_. At that night, Eddie cried holding him close, not out of sadness, not exactly, but because he knew Richie deserved the world and he wished everybody could see it. 

“Hey,” a husky whisper on his back and Eddie feels a goosebump on his entire body. He turns around and Richie is smiling, sleepy eyes. 

Richie is always smiling when he looks at Eddie. It doesn’t matter what he is doing, it doesn’t matter what Eddie is doing. If Eddie catches Richie’s eyes, the instant answer is a smile on his face. Eddie never thought he could be loved like that. He never thought he could love like that. Without having to smile in return. Without being forced to. Without feeling love like an endless cycle of worries and fears. 

Eddie smiles back to Richie, just because he wants to. 

_ (and then most of you) _

Richie is drunk.

He knows he shouldn’t be. He doesn’t have a single friend in New York. Hell, he doesn’t even know what he is doing in this fucking town. Getting drunk without having someone to take care of him after is stupid. Not that he has someone to take care of him in L.A., but at least there his roomie wouldn’t let him choke to death on his own vomit or something like that.

It’s an odd feeling, he almost can feel how it is to be taken care of. It’s probably his imagination. He never had real friends. 

And because of that, he’s in New York alone doing god knows what. He loves L.A. But ever since he left home - four years? five? his memory got foggier and foggier with the passing of time - he felt like there was a magnet in New York and the opposite one in his heart. Like he had to be there someday, to find something. He was a dreamer, some would say. Always looking at the distance, always expecting something to happen, someone to come back, anything that could save him from his miserable life. 

And to New York he went. Richie was very unimpressed. He found nothing but alcohol. 

And now he is getting out of the party, in need of some air. Richie loved parties. He loved noise. There was nothing more terrible to him than being alone with his thoughts, the longing that never left his heart. He even had started to take medication to sleep. He couldn’t stand the dread of being awake alone at three a.m., without a living soul to chat with. 

“Hey!,” he trips in someone and then they are both on the floor. The other person gets up really fast and is screaming something at Richie, that can’t be bothered by this because he is occupied noticing that this is the prettiest person he’s ever seen. It’s a guy about his age, smaller, brown eyes shining under the streetlamp, lips becoming an angry line while he’s talking. 

“Are you listening what I’m saying?,” the guy brings his head closer to Richie’s face. “You made me drop all my medication! I’m gonna kill you!”

“You’re beautiful,” Richie whispers because it’s true and he is drunk and _ Princess Mononoke _ is just out and he loves that one scene. And to his delight, the stranger face is now colored with pink and he hesitates. Richie is smiling. He can’t help it. It’s like his brain was programed to smile when looking at this specific person he’d never seen before. 

“You’re… you’re fucking drunk,” he answers, and begins to gather together the pills that Richie accidentaly dropped. Richie starts to help him. 

“I am. That doesn’t change anything. Here, your pills. What’s your name?”

“Why do you wanna know, jerk…” the other boy takes his pills from Richie’s hands in a hurry, but Richie notices that his ears are still burning red. Cute, cute, cute.

“I’m not a jerk! You hurt my feelings like that, dear. My name is Richie Tozier, at your service,” he bows. “Please, don’t run away now, you’re the most interesting thing that happened at this party. Were you coming in? It sucks in there. You’d be better going out with me.”

“Oh, my god…” the stranger sighs, but Richie can see a little smile there, in the corner of his mouth. His heart beats with hope. “You’re literally crazy. And I was leaving.”

“So leave with me!,” Richie is on his knees now and the other boy begins to laugh, shaking his head. “But tell me your name first, or I’ll have to spend the rest of our lives calling you my prince charming.”

“Eddie,” he answers. “Eddie Kaspbrak. I can’t believe I just fucking told you my name… man, you’re annoying.”

“But you like it! Eddie, Eddie, Eds,” Richie is saying and he doesn’t know why but _ Eds _ feels so sweet in his tongue that he wishes he could keep calling him that. Richie feels really dumb. He just met this guy, but he feels like he could go anywhere with him. 

Maybe he is too desperate to love, to be loved. Maybe he dreams too much, dreams where he sees a shadow, a boy, a laugh, so far away. Maybe he did love someone, in another life, and this love was so intense that he still felt it. 

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie’s voice is rispid, but there’s a brightness in his eyes that tells Richie that he didn’t hate the nickname that much. “So, where do you wanna go?”

After that question, Richie is sure that a lot happened but his mind was too high to register. Because now, _ now _ they’re in his hotel room, Eddie’s mouth on his cock and Richie is seeing stars. Eddie said _ don’t touch me _ and Richie answered that that was really unfair, but now it was almost impossible. He wants to put his hands on Eddie’s hair. On Eddie’s body. He wants to be all over him.

Richie thinks that he is literally crazy, as Eddie had said, because he feels like this isn’t their first time together, but he knows that he had never been with someone who made him feel like this. Like he deserved attention. If he had met anyone like him, he would remember. 

“Please,” he begs. He doesn’t care. Actually, he likes it. “Let me touch you.”

Eddie lift his eyes and they are darker than when Richie met him and he nods. Richie’s hands are on Eddie’s hair now, pulling him closer to his mouth and then he kisses Eddie everywhere: cheeks and neck, shoulders and nipples. “Don’t… do this,” he says when Richie is about to take his dick in his mouth. Richie nods and kisses Eddie’s tights instead.

Richie is sure as fuck that he is truly insane, because the feeling of Eddie’s body is sending shivers down his spine and he makes Eddie lay down and asks “Can I kiss you somewhere else?,” with the horniest smile on his face and Eddie’s face is burning but he whispers _ yes_, one word so full of desire that Richie feels like he’s already on his edge. He presses his tongue against Eddie’s ass, and then in and out, and Eddie is babbling incoherent words and the only thing that Richie can think is that this is the hottest person he’d ever been with and he would be happy to fuck only Eddie for the rest of his life.

Damn, Tozier. Are you an emotional mess or what?

Richie takes the smaller man on his arms and for the first time in a long, long time he feels completely awake in the most positive way, and his longing heart is no longer yearning.

_ (some and) _

Eddie sees Richie and he _ remembers_.

He remembers a ten-year-old boy with big glasses, running away from his bullies, holding Eddie’s arms so he wouldn’t be left behind even though Eddie was perfectly capable of running alone, he could run really fast when his mother was not looking. He remembers a thirteen-year-old boy covered in dirt and blood, holding a baseball bat, facing a walking nightmare in clown’s shape. He remembers a sixteen-year-old boy kissing him so suddenly and fiercely that he felt his heart stopping. He remembers a seventeen-year-old boy undressing him like he was the most precious person in the world. He remembers a nineteen-year-old boy crying hard on his shoulder, trying to say goodbye and failing. He remembers a twenty-four-year-old man looking at him from above, inside him, in and out, breathing fast and still looking at Eddie like he was a dream. 

Eddie remembers Richie Tozier and it’s like a blow right on his chest. 

He thinks about his mother, of course, and then about Myra, who is too his mother, only this time behind the bedroom doors. And then about Richie and the only times he had really being free. The only times he allowed himself to feel his truth. 

Richie looks at him, and smiles. Like he always did. 

Later, Eddie is still awake in his room. Not because of his fear. Not because he’s thinking about Stan. Not because of Richie, strictly speaking. Just because it’s so unfair. It’s so unfair that there was a time he wasn’t afraid, a time he was himself, a time he had friends he could count on, a time he had silenced his mother’s voice saying that he should always be careful in the worst possible way, a time when he was finally free of the fear that nested in him all his life and then he lost the memory of his victory. _ Eddie runs quite fast when you’re not here, Mrs. Kaspbrak_. For a time in his life, he was the person he spent all his life wishing he could be. Someone who was not delicate at all, someone who didn’t hold back his own bravery, someone who protected others, someone who didn’t need to be always protected. And all of it had been taken away from him. His most precious memories, _ the good stuff_, the easiest pieces to lose. 

He hears a knock on his door and his heart beats inside his whole body.

“Hey,” Richie’s voice is soft. Eddie thinks that years have passed, that he doesn’t even know how Richie’s life really is now. But he doesn’t care. They may be dead by morning, living in a city haunted by a murderer clown. And so he does the only thing his mind is screaming at him to do ever since he laid his eyes on Richie Tozier.

He hugs him. Tight. All his body and mind and soul put in one simple gesture. 

Eddie feels Richie’s arms around him and for a minute is like nothing had changed. They’re young again. They’re in love again. They can be free again. Clearer and clearer. 

Richie is now inside his room, the door is closed. They stare at each other, Eddie is trying to keep a straight face, but Richie is smiling that goofy smile of his. They’re holding hands. 

“You know, when I saw you I thought… how could I forget that ass?,” Richie says and Eddie covers his face, laughing. He is so dumb. Eddie loves him so much. “But seriously, how could I… man, I see you now and the only thing I can think is that you’re the most beautiful person on the fucking Earth. And it’s been twenty-one years since we…”

“Actually, only sixteen,” Eddie says. Richie looks at him confused. Eddie feels his cheeks burning, but he can’t help smiling. “You still don’t remember… a night, in New York. You asked me to leave with you, like you always did.” 

Slowly, Eddie watches comprehension clears Richie’s face. He opens his mouth and closes it a hundred times. And then he kisses Eddie. Just like the first time, in a burst of courage. He kisses Eddie like a man in the desert who finally found water. He holds Eddie’s face and look into his eyes. “It was you. It was you. I could never recall your name, only the feeling, the feeling to be… to be home, like home for us was a good thing and not this fucking town. It was you, it was you, even if I didn’t recognize you, my heart did,” and he kisses Eddie again and again.

Eddie starts to cry. 

“Oh, no, babe, I’m sorry, I’m…” Richie begins to pull away and Eddie holds him.

“Don’t be,” Eddie whispers. There’s no reason to lie or to try to hide his feelings. “I wish I didn’t have to remember you, because I wish I had never forgotten you, Richie.” 

“We won’t forget this time. We won’t.” 

“Stay with me tonight,” Eddie murmurs, his hands already on their way to take Richie’s shirt off.

“Always, Eds. Always.” 

_ (now none of you) _

“Hey, Richie,” Eddie whispers. Richie holds him in his arms. There is so much blood, too much blood. On his hands, on his shirt, Eddie’s blood, he feels like he is the one about to pass out. This is not fair. This is not fucking fair. And Eddie is smiling. Why is he smiling while the only thing Richie can do is scream and cry? He thinks he should be the one trying to calm Eddie down. But he can’t. “You know I… I…” 

The revelation never comes. 

Bev whispers something that sounds awfully like _ honey, he is dead_. Richie hears everyone crying. Richie notices that he is speaking too, no control over his brain, no control over his mouth. “We can still save him, we can still save him,” he repeats and Ben is by his side, trying to make him let Eddie go.

He can’t. There is blood all over him, but it is Eddie’s blood, something that was inside Eddie’s body and now is on him. Richie can’t let him go. If he releases Eddie from his hug, he will admit what had happened. And he can’t. He can’t.

“Please,” his voice is so small that he feels like his hearing himself from inside an aquarium. “We can still save him.”

He promised Eddie the night before. He would be always by his side. He would always hold Eddie’s hand. He would never forget Eddie, never again. He promised Eddie. He can’t let go. 

“Richie, dear, please,” Bev’s voice, so far away. The world should have stopped. He is the only person awake and all his friends are paralised, sleeping, not seeing the truth. They can save him. “Please, we have to go.”

Where to go? Where could he possibly go without Eddie? 

Ben’s strong hands pull him away and Richie knows he is screaming, trying to go back the whole time. This can’t be happening. This is all a bad dream. This is Pennywise messing with his head. This is not real. This is not real. They’re outside, the Neibolt house is turning to dust. He screams and Mike and Ben are holding him. He has to go back. He has to bring Eddie up. He has to take Eddie away from there. 

They’re at the Barrens. It’s not real. It can’t be real. It’s not fair. Less than a day ago he was holding Eddie in his arms. Feeling Eddie’s heart beating under his own. Their bodies moving together. 

Richie wishes he could forget. But he knows he won’t. Not this time. Eddie’s blood is still on his hands. He doesn’t want to wash them. He doesn’t want to let this final piece of Eddie go. They should have saved him. 

Richie feels deep in his bones that he should have stayed down there with him. 

_(take me back to the night we met)_

Richie is eighty-four when he dies.

The first thing he notices is that he’s at the Barrens. The second thing is that he is young again.

“Took you fucking long enough,” says a voice behind him. 

Richie is smiling even before he turns around. 

**Author's Note:**

> i dont believe in anything after death BUT FOR THEM I DO


End file.
